Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Why wouldn’t the vampire tell him first?
Does he want me to run?
I don’t know. And maybe later today when I’m thinking straight and not in some leftover lavender haze, I will come to my senses and just… disappear. Never to see him again.
But I’m not gonna abandon him when he’s like this.
I finish getting dressed, get my coat out of the closet, and then—reluctantly—leave him behind as I go out to find medicine.
When I fish my truck keys out of my jacket, I pull out my phone too. I check the home screen, but there are no messages or missed texts.
I know I should call Zusi.
There is no way I’m calling Zusi.
Not yet, anyway. Twenty-four hours, I decide. I need just this one day to make sense of things. And anyway, it’s one day. How bad can things get in a single day? Because I feel… I dunno. Like I’m missing something about myself. An emptiness that seemed to fill up immediately upon meeting Ryet last night.
I get in my truck, slam the door, and just let out a breath.
I turn the the engine on, put the heater full blast and take a moment to think.
Because there’s something more to that last thought. Emptiness.
It was a throwaway word in my internal monologue. A bit of an overreaction, maybe.
Or was it?
Have I always felt an emptiness?
Have I always felt the missing pieces?
“They didn’t even let me read the books.” These words come out without any sort of premeditation. Just… there they are. Floating in the air in front of me. Literally. Like the purple words ‘blood lover.’
They didn’t even let me read the books.
Yes. There is an emptiness inside me.
And yes, I do feel a connection with Ryet that fills it up.
And I don’t know what this means, but… they didn’t even let me read the books.
They taught me a lot of things in the Guild school. Lots of very important things like reading, and writing, and math, and science, and martial arts. In the early days, when I was young, my schooling wasn’t any different than Zusi’s. We were in all the same classes together. But then, well into our teens, she and I had different electives.
But this is how school is for everyone as they get older. You’re with all the same friends and then… paths just diverge.
Even though that place is the only home I’ve ever known, I have always understood that I was a guest at the Guild school. No one really treated me different, either. Not overtly. No one teased me for being a witch. No one tried to beat me up. None of that mean-girl stuff happened. But I felt it, didn’t I? I felt that I was different. No one made a big deal about it, so I didn’t either, but that difference was always there.
I don’t know what Zusi’s electives were back in high school. She wasn’t allowed to talk about it. But mine were a little bit mindless, now that I think about it. We didn’t have a school newspaper, or a football team, or a yearbook. But we did have daily current events, and war games, and a chronicle.
I didn’t get to read the current events on camera for the morning briefing or anything—no students did that. But I was on the research team that put together the nightly broadcast.
I was in the same martial arts classes with all the Guild kids until ninth year, but in tenth year, when they were required to fight in the war games, I was put on the strategy team.
I participated in daily events, so of course I was included in the daily chronicle—which was a strict record of everything the Guild did. Kind of like how a president’s daily calendar is recorded for posterity. But there did come a day when no one cared what I was doing and my activities ceased to be important.
They cut me out. I felt it at the time, but I just… glossed over it, I guess.
But that’s what they did. I got to a certain age and they cut me out. And then Zusi and the other Guardians went one way, and I went the other.
Why?
I understand that I have the Black blood inside me, but I’ve never been a danger to the Guild. I’m a danger to humans because I feed the vampire and the vampire is the personification of evil on earth.
The Guardians are something other than human.
But maybe I am a danger to them? Maybe that’s why I could never truly be one of them?
Maybe it’s something big and important like that. But it’s just as likely that I’m just not one of them. It’s like raising an injured baby bird. You take it in, you take care of it, treat it like part of the family… but then the day comes when you have to admit, this is a bird and it belongs in the wild.